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Nelson Mandela, first commander of the armed struggle against the apartheid regime in South Africa, buried a gun at his secret hideout shortly before he was betrayed by the CIS and captured by the South African police.
What if I had told you that the mechanism of your brain is like plasticine and could be moulded to your own unique set of beliefs and hence abilities? Could you afford not to even try to step into a new reality? Would you dare?
Gabriel Kutama, an elderly illegal from across the border, is mugged at a Soweto taxi rank. He ends up at the house of Portia, a single mother who tends to his bruises. She allows him to stay on in a room at the back of her house.
But Gabriel is no ordinary man, for he is the former President of the country north of the South African border, presumed dead after a military coup. His wife has fled to London with their three children.
Many thousands of South African children are brought up by their grandmothers. This is one of the many manifestations of an unstable and distraught society, where the mother to child bond is too often broken, causing pain and a deep-seated sense of loss to both parties. Each Gogo-raised child’s story is different, but the general theme is the same: it deals with abandonment, with only qualified acceptance, but most of all with the simple absence of a real mother presence. The title of Vanessa Neo Mathope’s book – Orphaned, with Living Parents – tells it all. A monstrous imbalance has occurred, and the consequences run deep.
Speaking as I Want is the outcome of conversations between a father (lecturer) and a daughter (student) on life and living in a period of intellectual uncertainty within and outside of universities. It seeks to provoke wider reflection on the way we live and the narratives that currently influence us.
‘Mama…where is my Daddy?’
As a single mother Thuli has always tried to do her best for her daughter, living each day with the legacy of her past. But even she may not be able to give Lesedi the one thing she really needs. Unless life with its unexpected twists and turns finds a way to provide.
A tale of love and lies, hopes and dreams.
From the author of Gabriel’s Apology.
